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Thursday, December 11, 2008

Patch Notes: 3.0.8

There is nothing really major here for moonkin but there are some interesting things in the patch currently on the PTR. If you would like the full patch notes and a list of undocumented changes I recommend looking at here at MMO Champion.

Talent/Spell Changes:Genesis: Now works with Tranquility and Hurricane. - This effectively does nothing for moonkin. This talent still sucks. If I want to buff hurricane I will pick up Gail winds.

Nature's Grace - Now also effects Revive. - A half second off my 10 second out of combat rez? Whoopie!!!!!!

Starfall - Will now be cancelled by any shapeshifting. - Is this really necessary? Is it really a bad thing that I can shift out and heal while Starfall continues to tick? I just don't see the point of this one.

Remove Curse and Abolish Poison can now be used in Moonkin form. - This is really nice. I am currently the only raiding druid in my guild. We usually have shaman to clear up the poisons, but there have been times when I've had to do it on 10-mans or heroics. It will make my life easier.

Glyph Changes:Glyph of Focus - Increases the damage done by Starfall by 20%, but decreases its radius by 50%. - The general design idea behind glyphs has been that you gain something at a cost. In my opinion this glyph is pure win. I have actually been fairly frustraited with Starfall. It is our new "dumb" spell, because I have little control over who it targets. I can't use it much on Malygos because it will kill the sparks to early. I have the same problem on Loatheb. I can't use it on trash at all because it is likely that I would pull a pat. This glyph doesn't cure those issues but makes them easier. In reality though, none of this matters. Moonkin already have 4 very good major glyphs available to us. I don't see my self giving up the MF, SF or IS glyphs for a glyph to improve Starfall.

Glyph of Typhoon -Reduces the cost of your Typhoon spell by 8%, but it no longer knocks enemies back. - This glyph does improve Typhoon from a PvE perspective, but the spell is still pretty bad, therefore there is no real use for this glyph.

Random:* Tapping: All player spells which cause a creature to become aggressive to you will now also immediately cause the creature to be tapped. - This is an awesome change. It won't mean much for Graylo since Moonfire is the best mob tagging spell around, but my two main alts are a shadow priest and an affliction warlock. The mad leveling rush is over, but this should make their lives easier when content is released in the future.

* The run speed in spirit form has been increased by 50%. Night Elves in Wisp form will now move at 75% speed. - WOOT!!! Faster corpse runs. The also added 60 grave yards to vanilla WoW.

* Alchemy - All flasks no longer require an alchemy lab to create. - Not a surprise, but I wish this had happened a little sooner. You don't need a lab for the new flasks already, but if you read my last post you know that I am not able to make any of the new flasks yet. So, I have opted to use the old flasks for the time being since Fel Lotus is very cheap right now and it still persists through death. It would be nice to not have to go to shattrath anymore but I am sure that I will be using the new flasks by the time this patch goes live.

Whats Not in the Patch:In general, I'm pretty happy with how Moonkin look and with Wrath of the Lich King in general. Most of the things I would like changed aren't huge, but I have come across one issue recently that I can't for the life of me understand why it has not been fixed.

Where did all of the gem crafting patterns go? I was trying to gets someone to cut a [Purified Twilight Opal] for me and I come to find out that it is impossible. Its not that the gem isn't in the game, because it is in the game files. Its just impossible to learn. Really, how hard is it to put all of the gems in the game? I realize that the blizzard employees are busy people but this is just ridiculous.

15 comments:

I'm surprised you didn't mention the nerf to the Titansteel Guardian. I don't think they've posted official numbers on it, but they are decreasing the amount of spellpower 'to bring it in line with its item level.'

Glad I'm working away on getting the Kirin'Tor weapon instead. Doubly glad I didn't make the titansteel either

I think the Curse/Poison is a pingpong revert. My vague memory of the start of BC was that RC could be cast in form but AP forced caster form. I definitely remember one of the patches during BC changing it to allow AP in moonkin form. Moving to Wrath recently I was disspointed to note that AP was back to switching out to caster form so I'd say this PTR change is a fix for someone accidentally ticking the wrong box and putting the setting back to an older date.

The Starfall change doesn't seem to make much sense to me, maybe they were seeing feral jumping from caster to bear and this wasn't something they'd balanced the spell for. TBH I only currently use it in conjunction with Hurricane in a mana chewing AoE play (under Barkskin, in moonkin form) but it does seem a bit harsh to switch it off if someone was to change to caster to push healing.

"Starfall - Will now be cancelled by any shapeshifting. - Is this really necessary? Is it really a bad thing that I can shift out and heal while Starfall continues to tick? I just don't see the point of this one."

just in case anyones wondering this change was mostly made for the fact that in PVP Arena Boomkins would pop starfall (then possibly go in travelform) and use it as a minesweeper to bring rogues/cats out of stealth.

that aside quite a good patchnothing very big tho, the change with Moonkins being able to cast their Cures is quite nice, i was always forgetting which one i was able to cast in moonkin :P

btw by possibly i mean most of the time on the starfall/travelform combo.well it doesnt really madder anyway since theres a "glitch" that stealthed rogues/cats not to be hit by starfall, GC says this is not intended but hes thinking about leaving it in cuz of massive rogue QQ

"We will let you shift from caster to Moonkin form or back without cancelling the spell.

We just didn't want players going cat or travel and racing around with Starfall hitting everything. It is an unusual spell since it requires no channeling and moves with you. We have to make it a little restrictive to solve some of these creative uses. "

Regarding Typhoon, I'm not sure its entirely useless. I've seen my typhoon hit multiple mobs for over 3k damage (around 3200 per mob, and I was lvl 72 at the time) so if you add the Glyph's 20% onto that, remove the knockback, and consider its not subject to interruption or pushback issues... You have a nice boost to immediate AOE damage output.

If you throw down a starfall, and hit barkskin/hurricane, you're pushing out some impressive damage. Throw in a typhoon in the middle, adjust for lvl 80 stats and gear, you just substantially upgraded your dps. At least, that's what I've found.

I do have to say that I don't believe typhoon is useless. It has no damage cap. By damage cap i mean, it can hit three mobs for three seperate amounts of damage or it can hit 15 different mobs for 15 different amounts of damage. I can pull the entire stockades and use typhoon to damage all of them to near death with one shot. All of them.

Re: Remove Curse. I was doing some minor decursing in Naxx10 in Moonkin without coming out of form. This has been in place since a 2.x patch I believe. I'm with Shivoa on this one. Seems they are fixing an error in a newer build. I currently pop-out of Moonkin when cleansing poison (but not RC)

I've had to shift out for AP for quite some time, well back into TBC, but could stay in for RC. I think this change is just to bring us into line with the resto druids, who for the longest time couldn't RC in tree form, but got to do so in 3.0, now we're getting to AP in chicken form, to match that. I think they're saying 'You can RC *AND* AP in Moonkin' rather than 'You can *RC* and *AP* in Moonkin.'

Also, I'm with Crimcou on the typhoon change. It's our only reliable instant cast AoE. Starfall does a lot of damage, but its just too dangerous, with too long a cooldown, to rely on.

Think of typhoon as a long range, directional arcane explosion. It's awesome for aoe'ing on the move. Takes a bit of getting used to, and experience jumpshotting as a hunter helps, but it can really speed up trash kills.

The two examples that come to mind with typhoon are Maexxna and CoT:Strath. With Maexxna, one typhoon, one arcane explosion, and one TC will kill most of the adds in 10 man instantly. Also useful for taking out the webs. Turn and fire before the web is fully formed, and it'll hit just as its targetable, before anyone with an instant cast attack can even target it.

With CoT:Strath, its basically the same thing. I can kitty form and sprint to the next pack in the first section, turn, Chicken form, and one shot all the mobs that came behind me in one attack. Speeds up the time dealing with those skeles by a lot.

My guild relies on me for the IS 3% miss debuff in raids, so while I would love the extra 30% damage on IS, it's never going to happen, and with mana being the non-issue it is once you've gotten your first few raid purplehs, I'll definitely be dropping Glyph of Innervate for the new typhoon glyph.

Yea, I missed the TitanSteel Guardian nerf. I feel a little bad for anyone that had it crafted but it is still a fairly nice mace. I didn't craft it because I didn't really see the point. In my opinion there are a lot of weapons in naxx and such that are better and I hate spending a lot of money to craft items that will be replaced.

@ Shivoa

I don't think it is a revert. Backin 2.4 (i think) they made Moonkin able to Decurse and Trees to Abolish Poison. It was rumored that Tree's could Decurse and Moonkin could Abolish Poison, but it was never seen in an actual build. I think it was just a case of people missunderstanding the change, and when you think about it it makes sense. Moonkin are kind of like mages who can Decurse also. Trees are healers, and poisons are more natural. Anyway, good change no matter what the history.

@ Manic1207 and Crimcou

Ok, the Starfall change makes a little more sense now. I am not a PvPer so I hadn't thought to use it in that way but it would be a little OP for a moonkin to pop starfall and switch to travel form to find every steathed opponent in the arena.

@At Multiple People regarding Typhoon

The only thing Typhoon has going for it is that it is an instant cast. Other then that it has serious issues in PvE.

Most of the uses that you guys have proposed are very suituational and can be filled by another spell or can more easily be taken care of by another class.

Typhoon is a mana hog that cost three times as much as Wrath but does less damage. You can use it on Maexxna if you like but your spending a ton of mana to gain a second.

Also, it is almost as dangerous as Starfall, because it travels through the target. The way my guild does trash I have to worry about hitting the next pack. I could try and reposition my self but that costs me DPS time and eliminates everything gained.

Finally, it costs a talent point that could be used else where that would provide more benifit.

Typhoon is a PvP spell, and taking the knockback away makes it useless.

JC patterns are a lot different now than they were in TBC. Rather than have a majority of the meta gems and other blue patterns be BoE drops, they're earned through a JC daily in Dalaran. The daily gives 1 JC token that you can spend on new patterns with the average price between 2-6 tokens.

This is good for us JCers because we can pick and choose which recipes we buy first but not so good for others. If the JCer you know is a caster, you can almost bet they aren't going to waste their tokens on agi/crit patterns.

Each heroic also drops 1 set pattern at the last boss as well. These patterns are more common among JCers on our server since most of us are still doing the dailies to buy THOSE patterns. You can run a few heroics in a few hours and come away with 4 or 5 new patterns =D.

Buy anyway, yeah, this is why a lot of JC patterns are hard to find. The expansion hasnt been out long enough for JCers to earn enough tokens and buy all of the patterns.

I think you are missunderstanding the issue. This isn't a case of I'm having a hard time finding someone to cut a Purified Twighlight Opal. Its that it is literally impossible to find someone to cut a pureified Twighlight opal. There is not a single player on any realm that can cut it because the pattern to learn the cut is not in game.

I'm going to miss popping Starfall, running around and aggroing massive amounts of creatures, then barkskinning and hurricaning them down. It made farming so much fun. Oh, well. At least I can cast abolish poison in boom form while the freakin rogues are sticking me with their nail files. It will make survival against them in pvp so much easier.